I don't know if the school system is integrated between all provinces, but I am surely tell you that in Guangzhou, elementary school lasts from 1-6, middle from 7-9, and high school from 10-12.

Yes, schools in China are hard. You are to take in the rule before taking in the concept behind it. And teachers are a lot stricter, with punishments like standing at the corner or hand-smacking, I think. But my cousin that get a big bruise ob his face for doing bad. It was not from a slap though, the teacher kinda.... can't describe the motion......

But homework is kind of like, pouring rain over you, except it's homework.

And 10th graders have this week-long physical camp where students are out of the house and are in military like uniforms running and exercising. (Mentioned somewhere here.)

people normally go to school at age of 6. 6 years of primary school, 3 years of middle school, and 3 years of high school. then normally 4 years of university, and some years of grad school.
first 9 years are supposed to be free, paid by the nation. but some still got no education in poor country part. then you need to take this hard exam to go to high school, where so many can't go, one, your studying is too bad, they don't take you, two, you are too poor to pay for high school. so some go to some sh*ty tech school, or starting to make a living. now the nation is trying to get a 12 year free education for everyone.
once you are in high school, you will start to prepare for uni. uni used to be paid by the nation, if you could pass the exam to uni. today, not really, almost everyone who could pay, could go to uni. that's where there are so many schools starting to call themselves univeristy. and chinese university graduates number is increasing like e^n, where n-> 8 (infinity). and the quality of uni students is decreasing like e^n, where n-> -8 (negative infinty). today, you throw a rock into chinese young people, it will hit 3 people, 2 actually went to uni, and 1 has a fake uni degree.
so, today, we have every kinda people taking "courses" in university. hookers, mafia, drug dealers, you name it.
in the next 20-30 years, china doesn't need anyone to take it over, it will destroy itself, with this new bunch of university students.

Registered Member

The educational system in China is a major vehicle for both inculcating values in and teaching needed skills to its people. Traditional Chinese culture attached great importance to education as a means of enhancing a person's worth and career. In the early 1950s the Chinese Communists worked hard to increase the country's rate of literacy, an effort that won them considerable support from the population. By the end of that decade, however, the government could no longer provide jobs adequate to meet the expectations of those who had acquired some formal schooling. Other pressing priorities squeezed educational budgets, and, of course, the anti-intellectualism inherent in the more radical mass campaign periods affected the status and quality of the educational effort. These conflicting pressures made educational policy a sensitive barometer of larger political trends and priorities. The shift to rapid and pragmatic economic development as the overriding national goal in the late 1970s quickly affected China's educational system.

The Chinese educational structure provides for six years of primary school, three years each of lower middle school and upper middle school, and four years in the standard university curriculum. All urban schools are financed by the state, while rural schools depend far more heavily on their own financial resources. Official policy stresses scholastic achievement, with particular emphasis on the natural sciences. A significant effort is made to enhance vocational training opportunities for students who do not attend a university. The quality of education that is available in the cities is generally far higher than that in the countryside, where relatively few students acquire even a secondary education.

The overall trend in Chinese education is toward fewer students and higher scholastic standards, resulting in a steeply hierarchical educational system. Only about one-third of the nation's primary school students gain access to some secondary education, while less than 2 percent ever attend a regular university. Only the best students are allowed to go beyond a primary school, and many secondary schools are closed because of a lack of students. For the overwhelming majority of students, admission to a university since 1977 has been based on competitive nationwide examinations, and attendance at a university is usually paid for by the government. In return, a university student has had to accept the job provided by the state upon graduation.

The system developed in the 1950s of setting up “key” urban schools that were given the best teachers, equipment, and students was re-established in the late 1970s. The inherently elitist values of such a system put enormous pressure on secondary-school administrators to improve the rate at which their graduates passed tests for admission into universities.

Six universities, all administered directly by the State Education Commission in Beijing, are the flagships of the Chinese higher educational system. They are Peking University, the leading nontechnical university; Tsinghua University, an institution that is oriented primarily toward engineering; People's University of China, the only major university founded after 1949; Nankai University in Tianjin, which is especially strong in the social sciences; Fudan University, a comprehensive institution in Shanghai; and Sun Yat-sen University in Guangdong, the principal university of South China. In addition, every province has a key provincial university, and there are hundreds of other technical and comprehensive higher educational institutions in locations around the country. The University of Hong Kong is the oldest school in Hong Kong.

The damage done to China's human capital by the ravages of the Great Leap Forward and, especially, by the Cultural Revolution was so great that it has taken years to make up the loss. After the 1970s, however, China's educational system increasingly trained individuals in technical skills so that they could fulfil the needs of the advanced, modern sector of the economy. The social sciences and humanities also receive more attention than in earlier years, but the base in those disciplines is relatively weak—many leaders still view them with suspicion—and the resources devoted to them are thin.

Now that Red Guard mentioned it, are the huge numbers of graduates in engineering really a threat to anyone? I mean comm'on, this is a place where quantity doesn't do much. And if the US government is "scared".......well, it's rather blunt...

i went 2 china during the summer of 2000 on a school exchange program for a month and boy i can tell u, chinese students face WAY more stress and WAY BIGGER work loads then the avg Canadian students. My home stay's son started school at 8am and didnt finish til 6:30pm.....students in canada usualy start around 8:30am-and end at around 3:00pm. I'm impressed at how well alot of chinese students can speak english quite decently.

About Us

SinoDefenceForum.com community offers the place to discuss strategic Chinese defense, military, military hardware, defence technology and geopolitical issues! We pride ourselves on offering unbiased, mature, and critical discussion among people of all different backgrounds.